Friday at 5-7 p.m. has the worst traffic jam in Seoul

It is highly recommended to use public transportation rather than to drive one’s own car on “hot Friday (a coined word to mean Korean version of TGIF)”. The reason: an analysis on traffic volume in Seoul by day and time showed that the Friday afternoon has the worst traffic jam on the road.

On Thursday, Seoul City revealed the analysis result of a 32.2 billion-sized big data on vehicle traffic on the city’s roads. The data has been collected from the traffic information that the city has provided real-time and global positioning systems that are installed in some 72 thousands taxies.

It turned out that the average speed was the slowest at 5 p.m.-7 p.m. on Friday with 21 km per hour, followed by Monday morning from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m., with 24.9 km per hour. During weekdays, the traffic was worse when workers are returning back home from work (at 21-23.2 kilometers per hour) than when they are going for work (at 24.9 km-26.8 km per hour). In 2014, the average traffic speed of the entire roads in Seoul marked 25.7 kilometers while downtown areas (major roads within the Four Great Gates such as Sejong-daero and Euljiro) have 17.4km and other roads 26 kilometers.

Of the eight urban expressways in Seoul, Seobu Expressway, had the lowest hourly-speed of 35.9km. Five “expressways” including Seobu, Gyeongbu, Dongbu and Gangbyeon had an hourly-speed that is slower than 60 km, putting the name “expressway” to shame. The Gangbyeon Expressway had the largest daily traffic volume of approximately 0.26 million vehicles while Olympic Highway and Gyeongbu Expressway had some 0.25 million and 0.21 million, respectively. The section that had the highest daily average traffic turned out to be Seongdong from Seongsu on Dongbu Expressway with some 0.15 million, Banpo from Dongjak on Gangbyeon Expressway with about 0.15 million and Hangang from Dongjak on Olympic highway with around 0.14 million vehicles.